Great book of quotations and wisdom for just about anyone, in any circumstance: "Good Advice," by William Safire and Leonard Safir (brothers). This is from the preface....

"It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience to warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of experience. When sailors have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck to escape with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or barbarians as well as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of buoys and of lights, in order that others may not be exposed to the danger which they have so narrowly escaped. What man of common humanity, having by good luck, missed being engulfed in a quagmire or quicksand, will withhold from his neighbors a knowledge of the peril without which the dangerous spots are not to be approached?"

William Cobbett,

"Advice to Young Men And (incidentally) To Young Women In The Middle and Higher Ranks Of Life." 1829

Why is it that females are often less mathematically-inclined than males? According to a one-year study at the University of Chicago (Beilock, et al), the discrepancy could largely be related to their early-childhood teachers’ attitude towards the subject.

The study found that female elementary teachers can subconsciously demonstrate anxiety about math and pass that on to their female students, since girls’ attitudes about math are formed at a young age and are heavily influenced by the attitudes of the women who instruct them. The study showed that boys were not similarly influenced by their female teachers’ unspoken preferences.

Since nine out of ten U.S. elementary school teachers are female, the authors recommend that elementary teachers undergo greater mathematics preparation in order to feel more comfortable with the subject. Female teachers’ subject-area confidence would presumably then be passed on to female students.